{"nrhp_refnum":"83003291","name":"Rosedale","other_names":["Graves Mill","Clay's Mill","Tomahawk Mill","Johnson Cottage","Vhlc11"],"category":"building","location":{"address":"Old Graves Mill Rd.","address_restricted":false,"city":"Lynchburg (Independent City)","county":"Lynchburg","state":"VA","lat":37.376303799000056,"lon":-79.22860613401994,"geom_source":"nps_gis"},"listed_date":"1983-07-07","is_nhl":false,"nhl_designated_date":null,"areas_of_significance":["Exploration/Settlement","Architecture"],"significance_levels":["state"],"summary":{"what_it_is":"Rosedale is a rural farm complex on Tomahawk Creek in Lynchburg, Virginia, with an 18th-century frame cottage, an 1830s brick mansion, mill ruins and outbuildings. The cottage dates to about 1764-1774 and the mansion to 1836-1838.","why_significant":"The Christopher Johnson Cottage is a little-altered example of a vernacular home built by early Quaker settlers in the Piedmont. The mansion, built for Odin Clay, shows some of the earliest Greek Revival details in the area, drawn from Asher Benjamin's pattern books. Together with the mill ruins and farm buildings, they form a rare surviving rural ensemble at the edge of the city.","narrative":"Rosedale is a farm complex above Tomahawk Creek in Lynchburg, Virginia, where two houses from different eras sit about a hundred feet apart. The older is the Christopher Johnson Cottage, a story-and-a-half frame house on a fieldstone basement, built between about 1764 and 1774 by an early Quaker settler. It survives remarkably unaltered and is a good example of the simple dwellings put up by the first settlers of this part of the Piedmont. Nearby is the brick mansion built by Odin Clay in 1836-1838. Clay served in the Virginia House of Delegates and became the first president of the Virginia and Tennessee Railroad. The house has some of the earliest Greek Revival details in the area, including a door surround and a stair landing Greek Key pattern that match plates in Asher Benjamin's builder's handbook. A 1929 brick wing and earlier frame additions were later modified. A mill burned in 1967, leaving its foundations. Log outbuildings and a wooded setting remain.","period_of_significance":"1700-1799, 1800-1899 (specific dates ca. 1764-1774, 1838)","architect_builder":"Odin Clay (builder of the mansion); Christopher Johnson (cottage and mill); Stanhope S. Johnson (architect of the 1929 wing)","architectural_style":"Greek Revival (mansion); vernacular late 18th-century yeoman's cottage","criteria":[],"status_note":"Occupied as a private residence; the cottage serves as a guesthouse, and the mill burned in 1967, leaving only stone foundations and traces of the millrace.","vacant_flag":false,"machine_generated":true,"model":"claude-sonnet-5-5","prompt_version":"v1.0-2026-10-29","generated_at":"2026-10-29 02:51:56.726677-05","source_pdf":"https://s3.amazonaws.com/NARAprodstorage/opastorage/live/69/6817/41681769/content/electronic-records/rg-079/NPS_VA/83003291.pdf"},"photo":{"url_800":"https://nationalhistoricalregister.com/media/83003291/4ad7884b24-800.webp","url_1600":"https://nationalhistoricalregister.com/media/83003291/4ad7884b24-1600.webp","licence":"Public domain","author":"Richard Cheek, photographer","credit_html":"<a href=\"https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Rosedale_Lynchburg_VA_HABS_Photo.jpg\" rel=\"noopener\">Richard Cheek, photographer</a>, Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons","source_page":"https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Rosedale_Lynchburg_VA_HABS_Photo.jpg"},"district":null,"sources":{"nps_snapshot_date":"2026-05-22","nara_catalog":"https://catalog.archives.gov/id/41681769","wikipedia":"https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rosedale_(Lynchburg,_Virginia)","wikidata":"https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q7368157"},"indexable":true,"url":"https://nationalhistoricalregister.com/virginia/lynchburg/rosedale-83003291/"}